The Sheik's Reluctant Lover Page 0,15

to me.”

“You’re an active participant, Rachel. I just initiate the…pleasantries. You help me continue.”

“I do not!” she gasped.

He smiled briefly at her vehemence. “Come closer and tell me that.”

He took two more steps and she kept calculating the distance between them. Rachel shook her head. “I think I’m safer over here,” she countered. She glanced towards the door one more time.

He knew what she was thinking and stopped her with a simple statement. “You won’t make it so don’t even try,” he said with that deep, sexy voice.

She was smiling and didn’t even realize it. Rais in this kind of mood was different, somehow flirtatious and she had to ignore that voice in her head that told her to just rush into his arms and throw herself at him. Instead, she said, “You don’t understand the depth of my desperation. It makes people do crazy things.”

“And I believe that could be said right back at you my dear. I’ve felt you in my arms a few too many times today. I want to finish what we’ve started.”

“Here? In the stables?” she asked, both horrified and amused.

Rais stopped and looked around. He had indeed forgotten where they were, his mind completely absorbed in trying to get this woman to give in to the things he knew she wanted from him. Things he was more than willing to do with her if she’d just stop this silly pretense that she wasn’t interested.

While he was distracted, she took the chance and darted around him. She actually yelped in laughter when he reached out. Thankfully, he missed her by mere centimeters and she was able to dart out of the stall. She didn’t stop there but continued out of the stables, wanting to find a place where there were more people to keep her safe from his hands. And everything else about him. Just looking at the man, which she did as she turned the corner and caught him watching her as she hurried away, made her heart skip a beat.

She walked out into the bright, autumn sunshine. She took her sunglasses off of the top of her head and slipped them over her eyes as she walked to the corral. Her father was working one of the new horses and she walked around to the opposite side so she could watch her dad and figure out where Rais would go next. She was determined to avoid him as much as possible after their first two encounters today. Well, three if she were to count seeing him in her father’s cottage when she first woke up.

On the opposite side of the corral, she watched as Rais stepped out into the sunshine as well. He was so startlingly handsome with those dark, dangerous eyes. And he had muscles no world leader should have. She wondered how he worked out and would love to talk to him about his days, find out more what it was like to rule Dunari and all the problems he faced, but she didn’t think he would take her questions seriously. At least not right now.

He sauntered over to lean against the corral fence as well. He took a spot directly opposite where she was standing so she couldn’t really miss him as she watched the horse run through some exercises. The horse seemed to be showing off a bit but Rachel didn’t see much of the show. What she saw was Rais, without any sunglasses, staring back at her. She knew the exact moment that his eyes dropped from her eyes to her mouth because his hand came up, one finger rubbing along his own mouth.

The corral was wide, but not so wide that she didn’t realize that his eyes dropped once again, focusing on her breasts. It was at that moment that she remembered that her shirt was too small and the gap showed off a little too much. She gasped and reached down, tugging her shirt tails so that the gap wasn’t so apparent. She glared at him when she caught him laughing at her movement. And she thought she might actually hate him when his eyebrow went up. Curse him! There was no way he could tell that her nipples had hardened while he watched her. He was too far away, there was no way he could know. But they had. And she actually thought her breasts had swelled slightly, as if he were caressing them, his mouth lowering to taste the peaks and…she shifted slightly and